NYC schools and the Mac mistake
So the New York City Board of Education decided to buy a bunch of Macs for schools. Why not — the city has money to burn, and they’re such pretty computers. When the kids get into the real world they’ll have to switch to Windows like everyone else, but that’s a different story.
Most schools have WiFi, so networking isn’t a problem. Except that it is. Turns out that Mac OSX Leopard doesn’t quite do WiFi. There’s a significant bug, so the machines are pretty much useless for the schools.
So instead of giving the kids the computers, they’re all sitting in a warehouse collecting dust until Apple releases the next bug fix for OSX.
Next time, perhaps, the city will buy a bunch of HP’s. They can buy more computers for the same price so more kids can use ‘em, plus those kids won’t have to be embarrassed at job interviews when they say “I don’t know if I can use Windows.”
Windows Vista sucks on a lot of levels, for sure, but at least it can connect to the Internet wirelessly.
alt opinion says:
Did you read the links you pointed to?
Are they all sitting in warehouses? Um, no. And not even NYCE’s warehouses (Dell warehouses too, ironically enough). The article clearly says “some” units and even goes so far as to point out that many of the computers have shipped, the issue is only on some DOE wifi areas and many are working fine and/or on wired connections.
It might be helpful (although not to your point of snickering) to note that the bug has to do with cheapo wireless routers that NYCDOE uses in some locations. saying Leopard “doesn’t quite do WiFi” is bending the truth quite a bit. It has trouble with older, cheaply-boarded systems and soon it will work with those.
But, I would argue against any DOE ordering a ton of computers with the newest OS of Mac or Windows unless it’s been fully tested on a network. Wouldn’t want to get a ton of anything in just to have a large-scale Vista or Leopard problem.
They probably couldn’t save a dime going HP. By the time they paid for the HP, Vista, enough hardware to run them and buy all the equivalent software for what they need to do, they wouldn’t have beaten Apple’s education volume pricing. And hey, at 20% of new marketshare, I’m sure you’re thrilled Apple’s surging.
Anyway, I realize this was just a vehicle for you to snarkily snicker at Apple again. And here I took the bait wanting to make sure your readers saw what the article actually contained rather than your glossy parroting.